Casanova Cowboy (A Morgan Mallory Story) (40 page)

Chapter 51

As plans came together for the wedding, she was getting progressively sicker. She ended up in emergency with another surgery a month before the wedding, and I truly feared we might lose her. She was so focused on being there that I couldn’t imagine what I would do if she didn’t make it, how I would put the pageantry in motion without her.

             
“Ryan, it’s so damn tough to watch,” I said as I lay in his arms.

             
“I know it is,” he said, stroking my hair.

             
“What if she doesn’t make it? What will I do?”

             
“She will. She’s determined, she’s tough,” he said, kissing me. “Just like her daughter.”

             
“
Tough
can’t beat terminal cancer,” I said.

             
He pulled me tighter to him. I needed him, and he knew it. I needed him to remind me that life would go on, even after, that the world would not stop spinning when she was gone. She wouldn’t want it to stop spinning. My job reminded me of that too. I had to go in and do normal routine things, things people got up every day to do. Ryan kissed me more passionately.

“Make love to me
,” I whispered to him.

             
When he did, for a split second I could forget about the sadness, and concentrate on the two of us. Focus my thoughts on only him. Let him take me away from the pain on a magic carpet ride with his touch.

Mom made it out of the hospital and actually had a good month.
The night before the wedding, Mom, Gayle, and I stayed at the Rancho Bernardo Inn, and the three of us reminisced about old times. We dug deep in our memories to relive times we’d shared. I could tell that for her it was therapeutic, going back over her life. Not once did we talk about her being sick, there was no room for it.

Liz, along wit
h my other bridesmaids, arrived the next morning. We drank champagne and reminisced some more. We laughed so hard, we cried. Mom made me promise that I wouldn’t be sad on our honeymoon.

“
This is about you and Ryan, not about me” she said.

I suspected that the
large number of people who were coming from out-of-state had two reasons to be there. Even if she didn’t want an ounce of it to be about her, it was.

“You look beautiful
,” I said as the hairdresser finished her hair and makeup.

             
She smiled at me in the mirror. This wonderful woman who gave me life, who became my best friend, now had to teach me life’s hardest lesson. I tried to envision life after she was gone, and I simply couldn’t. I reached out and ran my hand down her soft warm arm.

The day
started off with a light rain, and I was nervous because the ceremony was scheduled to be held outside. As we burned the morning away with more laughter, the sun finally decided to break through. It was almost as if she’d made it happen, had willfully wished the sun to shine, continuing to make the world right for me.

             
“Looks like your day is shaping up,” Liz said, as I heard the slider being opened.

             
I peeked around the corner of the dressing area at her and could see it was bright outside. The droplets hanging from the overhang glistening like crystals in the light.

             
“Yeah, sunshine!” I said excitedly.

             
I hadn’t seen Ryan for two days. He was spending time with his family in La Jolla where they were staying, and following tradition; I didn’t want to see him the night before the wedding. I thought about the phone call from Mathew, asking me if I was sure. Having come to some crazy conclusion that he was losing me forever. I couldn’t understand his impulsiveness, what had caused him to say, “there’s me”. There hadn’t been him for years and with all that was going on our past seemed silly, the whole Mathew ordeal.
Mom, you listened through all that drama too.

As we got closer to noon
, there was a knock on the door and to my stunned surprise Mathew walked in. He looked incredible handsome and yet a little sad. I knew Ann and Brad were coming, had no idea he was. We talked in the bathroom and again he said he wanted to make certain I was sure about marrying Ryan.
I was
so sure
. I understood how much better my life would be because Ryan had given me his whole heart.

After
Mathew’s departure
Gayle helped me get into my dress and put on my veil. I looked at my reflection in the mirror as she adjusted the hairpiece. The girl that I saw certainly had been forced to grow up over the last year. Love finally sorted itself out, only to have life give me a completely different, crushing blow. I saw Gayle looking at me in the mirror, and our eyes locked.

“She made it
,” she whispered.

             
I smiled and nodded my head slowly in acknowledgement.

             
The sun was shining, and the setting was beautiful as Dad walked me down the aisle. I smiled at my mom seated in the front row. Pat fiddled nervously with his bow tie as he stood lined up with the groomsmen, with Ryan’s youngest brother, Tommy, being his best man. Ryan stood calmly at the flower-bedecked altar in his tux, looking so handsome it made my heart overflow with love. When Dad walked me down the aisle and turned me over to him, Ryan smiled and his blue eyes sparkled. I let out a small joyful laugh.

The ceremony was a blur, then
we were hustled off for pictures. Ryan looked at me with such love in his eyes it filled my heart. After pictures were finished we moved into the reception room where we moved about as a couple, talking with our guests. I watched as guest after guest made it to the table we were sitting at with my mom. She was radiant and enjoying her wine. I couldn’t help but smile—she always loved a good party.

We delayed leaving on our
honeymoon to spend a little more time with Ryan’s family, and for the party my parents threw at their house the day after the wedding. We opened gifts and drank cocktails by the pool. As excited as I was to be getting away with Ryan I was nervous that something could happen to Mom while we were away.

             
Later that afternoon, I saw Ryan lace his arm through Mom’s and walk her out to the bench in the yard. I mingled with the guests outside as they talked, glancing their way occasionally to see if they were still there. At one point, I saw Ryan drop his head and focus on the patio. I looked from him to Mom, who was dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. Ryan was trying to stay strong for me, but I knew it was ripping him up as well.

We
spent our honeymoon week in Kauai, enjoying each other, making love, and catching our breath. So much had occurred in such a short amount of time. Worse, we knew what we had to face when we got back home. We called home everyday so we could hear her voice, hear the excitement in it when we told her about our day. Her dream for me had come true, and I wanted to share the happiness I was feeling. Ryan and I promised her no sick talk between us or with her, and we honored her request. For one short week, we felt sheltered from it.

Once the wedding
and honeymoon were over, she seemed to decline at a rapid pace, and within three months she was gone. It was one of the hardest things any of us ever had to watch. The pain of being helpless to prevent it was gut wrenching. To the very end, she never gave up, never stopped believing that something might change. She never let it get her down, and I marveled at her ability to keep up the Pollyanna attitude. The finality of her leaving us took days to sink in.

Ryan and I spent a lot of time at my parents’, my dad’s, house
now. The four of us—Dad, Pat, Ryan, and I—circling around each other, trying to perform the normal day-to-day things like getting a meal on the table. Pat and I talked and remembered and even managed to laugh. Dad seemed lost. In the ebb and flow of my parents’ love, he had realized they still loved each other.

I suggested
that, after the service was over, we go camping for a few days, and I made reservations at Van Damme State Park in Northern California. I figured a few days with nature and away from familiar things would be good for everyone. Force us to be together and talk amongst ourselves about our grief.

In a strange way
, her death was almost a relief; the pain and suffering she endured was over. The doctor visits, the chemotherapy that made her so sick, the utter failure of her body. The morphine finally stopped most of her pain near the end, but by then she didn’t know it. She had slipped into a coma the last two weeks. I told her that it was okay to go, and I made Pat and Dad do the same. I heard that sometimes it helped dying people if the living didn’t try to hold onto them.

We took
Mom’s ashes out on a close family friend’s sailboat off Point Loma, a place she’d enjoyed during her life. We kept it small, only ten of us. We played music that she loved and drank wine. Don Henley’s “The End of Innocence” played as my dad turned her ashes over to the sea. To me, that’s what it felt like, the end of my innocence. The sun started to set as we toasted to her life and how full it was, to how lucky we were to have shared the time we did with her. There was no shortage of tears.

Ryan and I moved to the
front of the boat to watch the ocean, feel the wind. Cutting through the water reminded me to keep looking forward, forward to our new life together.
She would want that.
He told me about their talk on the bench the day after our wedding. How he told her how much he would miss her. They’d reminisced about their friendship and about our journey. She asked him through tears to take care of me, always. His words made me sad, made me miss her.

“I promised her I would, always,” he said leaning his head into mine.

The sun was going down, getting close to the horizon, and it threw a path of light on the water, a band of light across the ocean leading to the sun. And there she was, that brightness, the beauty in the sea.

“That
’s her trail,” I said with small smile, pointing.

             
Ryan looked to where I pointed.

             
“That’s the warm spot. That’s where she will always be, in the warm spot, no matter what ocean we’re on,” I said, choking out the last words.

             
Ryan put his arm around me and drew me into him. I could feel the strength of his arm, his skin against mine and was glad to be alive.

             
“She was a great lady and a greater friend…” he started.

I felt him
suck in a deep breath.

              “She taught me a lot. She helped me see things I didn’t see, things I’d missed. She said you told her once to stop trying to make me love you. She never did try to convince me, she just listened. She knew I had to figure it out on my own.”

I pulled back and looked into his eyes.

“Your mom even told me to go, move on if I didn’t know. She only wanted the best for you.”

On our many walks on the
beach in the last few months, Mom had shared conversations she’d had with Ryan, when I was in Tahoe. How he felt like he had cut us both adrift and how nothing felt right to him without me. He worked through his feelings of doubt with her. She’d helped him to see that our love was bigger than he thought.

“She wanted to get one part of her life settled before she left this planet.
A part she knew she could help with. She wanted to know the people she was leaving would be okay, would go on. She damn well wanted to know she wasn’t leaving you with a broken heart to deal with,” he said and smiled.

His lips quivered slightly and I leaned in to kiss him.

“She wanted to know I had my best friend back, that there would be someone there to heal the boo-boos when she was gone,” I choked out with tears in my eyes.

I looked
up into his eyes. I loved this man with all my heart, and I knew he loved me. We’d been through so much together, so much that she had shared in. Whatever fix she thought she could do, she had done a good job.

“
She wanted to be damn sure she’d driven the Casanova out of the cowboy,” I said, smiling.

The End

The prequel to Casanova Cowboy available at Amazon.com

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